The Corrections

The pulitzer winning novel, clever engrossing, well-written, even if the author is a dick.

Birbirine benzeyen bütün mutlu ailelerin olmadığını, ailelerin sadece sancılı bir çabadan ibaret olduğunu düşündüğüm günlerde Jonathan Franzen’den Düzeltmeler'i okudum.

Sorumsuzlukla suçlanıp sorumsuz olmayan, başarısıyla suçlu hisseden, sorumluluğu mecburen eline alan çocuklar. Daha çok sevilen çocuklar, daha fazla sevilmeye muhtaç olan çocuklar veya daha çok üzüntü yarattığı için otomatikman daha çok sevilen çocuklar. Yıllardır gördüğüm ailelerin, yıllardır gördüğüm üyeleri. Takdir edilesi gerçeklikte, çıplak bir metin. Tüketerek iyi hissetme, Amerikan yozlaşmışlığıyla bir araya gelişi ise roman ilerledikçe kendini oturtuyor (Bazı yerlerde sıkıldım ama antidepresan açlığı/reddediciliği onları süpürdü.) toplumsal panoramayı açığa çıkarıyor.

Bu yıl okuduğum en iyi kitaptı, keşke kalbimle okumasaydım.
5/5

Before the thing I'm going to do here today (it's not a cut-n-paste thing but that would be fun wooden it?) ; let me highlight two (a few? I dunno I've not looked yet. This is a live Review) gr=Reviews from Friends that I think are lovely ::

Jacob's is just great ::
"Facts concerning Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections"
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Brian's is lovely ::
"An open letter to my former copy of The Corrections:"
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[okay so for the record (there's a nick in it and it keeps jumping skipping and popping like old lovely vinyl) I a) intend one day to read his first novel (please someone send me a signed 1st/1st) and b) what I hold against Franz is what he said about Gaddis and what he said about FC2 and what he says generally about Good Fiction; other people hate him for other more hip reasons)]

At any rate.

Jon Boy took some shit recently (again) on the internetz for some writing advice he gave. Or some advice about writing from him that someone posted somewhere. It was pretty silly. And yeah so?

Well anyway. I haven't written a 700 page brick. (yet? who nose) But. A new gr=Friend yesterday (today? (what's your writing advice re: parathens and cummas? hows about half colons? double colons? photos in a novels?) ) asked me for some writing advice. At least that's how I read the question. So I came up with some stuff. And I'm curious what you think of it. Is my list as pretentious (what's the right intonation of that word?) as Jon Boy's? [it gets better as it goes ; last point is probably better than the first]


"what do you suggest ? "

1) "I can read 200 pages per day" --start reading stuff that requires a 20 page/day pace. Like Hegel. The Wake. You're not reading at a 200 page rate.

2) Don't write a word until you understand that Borges is not a one=star experience.

3) Listen to all of Bach Beethoven Brahms Wagner Mozart Haydn Zappa. Then listen again. Then again.

4) Visit every museum of art in The Netherlands. Then visit Paris. Probably some history museums too. There's a lot of stuff in DC I've heard.

5) Visit Greece.

6 ) Learn ancient Greek and read Homer.

7) Read Shakespeare. Then go back to school and write your dissertation on Hamlet.

8) Get a job at Walmart or some other retail giant. Spend one hour before every shift sitting in the breakroom. Overhear every conversation in the store between then and one hour after your shift. Take notes if you need to.

9) See #1)

10) Read the (Hebrew & Greek) Bible the Quran some Hindu stuff ; avoid at all cost anything Buddhist or Taoist. Then go back and read the Bible again.

11) For one month go to a movie, at the theatre not at home, every day even if it means reseeing the same thing. Doesn't matter what theatre, art or multiplex. [don't do this in February, you'd lose a few days.)

12) Learn to cook. Then start gardening.

13) Get a job on a farm for a summer. Harvesting or shoveling shit it don't matter.

14) Every time a phone solicitor calls or you phone up some customer service person for some reason ask them how their day is and where they are physically calling from. Ask them when their next 15 minute break or lunch is coming up, or when their shift ends.

15) Give a panhandler five bucks. Or maybe ten. Never give change. A dollar is minimum.

16) Learn some other language other than the ancient Greek you learned for Homer. Maybe Arabic. Maybe Swahili. And read in that language. Everything.

17) Take up a hobby that is not language oriented : ie, knitting or woodworking or etc. Something in addition to gardening. Something that involves creating something. Playing chess is not a hobby. Maybe learn the violin or piano (not guitar, that don't count).

18) Walk for two miles every day.

19) Read Raymond Federman

20) When you are 32 read everything you thought you read when you were 22 and you think might still be of some value. Do the same at 52 for the 42 you. Etc.

21) Don't watch Television. Goes without saying.

22) Read the complete Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth. Some Thomas Aquinas and Augustine.

23) Do not revere either the beatles nor bob dylan nor pink floyd.

24) Make it up as you go along.

25) That guy in front of you at 7/11? buy them their coffee for them. Or do that at the grocery store if the guy in front of you is an old lady with bread and milk and coffee and few other small items.


Here's (a young) Frank playing the bicycle on the Steve Allen show ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5-RU...

That's the very first Frank (on Television). Here's something from almost the end ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPict...

Нуждата на Америка от Поправки.
или ... Когато децата е време да сменят местата с родителите си
е също подходящо заглавие за отзив.

Първа среща с Франзен и съм много доволен. Напомни ми на онзи стил модерна американска класика тип Ъруин Шоу, макар да има и немалко разлики. Типични американски теми в може би типично американско семейство. Бавно и солидно изграждане - точно както подхожда на такава книга. Акцентът плавно се прелива от индивидуалната човешка драма на всеки член от семейството към общата семейна драма на взаимоотношенията им.

Ако нещо наруши пълното ми удоволствие, то е по-скоро плоското представяне на прибалтийска републики с нейните лица и сюжети (представях си, че авторът произволно е взел някоя държава от Източна Европа, можеше и ние да сме). Не всички изградени образи бяха на еднаква висота като се замисля.

Обаче Алфред - голямо постижение е. От тези, дето си сигурен, че такъв човек съществува. Дори имаш такива близки / познати. Нещо ми напомни на „БАЩАТА” по Флориан Зелер, което сигурно да беше последната ми постановка в Народния, но може и да е просто носталгията ми по театъра.

И сега какво ... "Свобода"?

My two cents:

Wow! Jonathan Franzen's 'The Corrections' has received alot of attention since it was published in 2001, and I must say, the accolades are all well-deserved!
Thin on plot, but with such well developed characters- it is a psychological dissection of the relationship of an elderly couple and their three adult children. Mr. Franzen is a keen observer of human relations and delves deep into the collective psyche of the Lambert family. But it is so much more than a family drama. With humour and pathos, Franzen writes of the transformation of family, of society and of moral decay. And it is mostly a sad story, this story of who we are and where we are going, but it is done with incredible style and panache.

'The Corrections' is an unpleasant read. This family saga is an honest account of both the family members' individual stories and their common story full of crises, failures, disappontments, bitterness, secrets, miscommunication and unfulfilled expectations. In other words, it is a story about five unhappy people, related to one another, stuck in a vicious circle of childhood traumas, generational conflict and strained relationships. All this happens in the late 20th century when the societal change is taking place - the society is becoming more consumer-oriented. Can material success bring the parents and their children comfort and happiness?
All of then want to be happy. Each of them will have to go a long way of true and false 'corrections' to finally forgive and accept himself/herself and become more compassionate to their declining parents or struggling siblings. The fact that the children grew up disconnected from their parents (as the parents failed to communicate with each other) and from one another does not mean that the love is gone.

'She had been trying forever to explain herself, to make herself understood, while her own children grew up in a separate world of jokes and references she couldn't begin to comprehend.'
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'All around them, people were leaving. Families were fracturing. Parents were dying. And yet she was supposed to summon some enthusiasm for fish tacos.'
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'A love for his children that concealed itself in criticism.'
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'The world is so complicated, so fast-moving, that trying to be happy is like trying to build a house in a high wind.'
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'The correction, when it finally came, was not an overnight bursting of a bubble but a much more gentle and relentless unwinding.'
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'The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should freedom prove disappointing, to misanthropy and rage.'
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'The human brain was the most power-hungry organ in the body. If it didn’t get what it needed, it started eating itself.'
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'She could bear the idea of her husband dying, but not the idea of his suffering.'
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'In a country whose god was efficiency, he was a born dissenter.'

Δεν υπάρχει πιο πικρή συνειδητοποίηση από τη στιγμή που αντιλαμβάνεσαι πως η μέχρι τώρα ζωή σου είναι μια διαρκής προσάπθεια να διορθώσεις. Την εικόνα σου, τις σχέσεις σου, την οικογένεια σου. Ή να βρεις τρόπο να διορθώσεις ώστε να μην γίνεις σαν τους γονείς σου ή σαν την εικόνα που έχεις φτιάξει εσύ ή οι άλλοι για σένα. Από την άλλη δεν υπάρχει και πιο αισιόδοξο μήνυμα από το να ξέρεις ότι υπάρχει περιθώριο για διορθώσεις.
Εξαιρετικό μυθιστόρημα.

I read my first Franzen ( Crossroads ) only last year. I lavished it with 5-stars and handed it my book of the year rosette.

Thus it seemed logical to try, what Bret Easton Ellis apparently declared "one of the three great books of my generation" and Franzen's most respected work: The Corrections . This sprawling 653-page portrait of mid-western, middle-class American life really made me work for the little moments of joy I got out of it.

Mostly it is hard to ignore the feeling that I mostly loathed it.

It's difficult to say why this novel flopped while Crossroads with arguably similar themes was a success. The writing here is as good as you would expect from someone with Franzen's reputation. The novel is set up as a kind of tragi-comedy (I think ?) but seems overly meandering in places. I glazed over the doings in Lithuania and the entirety of Denise's story seemed created to give the author a chance to show off his love for food and try his hand at some sapphic sex scenes as opposed to his usual awkward heterosexual antics.

In the end, all I can conclude is that 600 pages, is a long time to be trapped with these deeply unappealing Lampert's and maybe Franzen is not for me after all.